The invention relates to a steering and stabilisation system for vehicles, particularly, but not exclusively, aircraft and ships, including means for the determination of attitude of a vehicle of the type comprising at least two magnetometers so mounted in the vehicle with respect to the direction of the fore-and-aft axis thereof as to determine each co-ordinate of a set of three orthogonal co-ordinates of attitude of the vehicle; means for the transformation of the orthogonal co-ordinates determined by the magnetometers into respective geodetic co-ordinates, and an additional sensor of attitude to provide supplementary information relating to one of the co-ordinates of attitude determined by the magnetometers.
Attitude determining means of the above-mentioned type having three magnetometers are known from the paper by R. Pietila and W. R. Dunn, Jr.--"A Vector Autopilot System" in IEEE transactions of Aerospace and Electronics Systems, Vol AES-12, No. 3, May 1976. They are characterised by the fact that it is possible to use constructional elements of low cost to produce a sufficiently accurate system and also an assembly which occupies a small volume.
It is an object of the invention to devise a steering and stabilisation system employing attitude-determining means of the aforesaid type and which has a small installation volume and can be manufactured at low cost.